Jim Close, where to start!
My first encounter with Jim was when I was photographing the Jamarella Team at the end of the Fastnet Race in 1989, they had just won the Admiral’s Cup, Jim was one of the happy faces on the back row. I didn’t know him at the time but little did I know that we would be sailing the Whitbread together a few months later!
I was onboard in Leg 4, The Southern Ocean leg from Auckland, round Cape Horn to Punta del Este Jim was an integral part of the crew, even at his young age he was always leading the foredeck crew from the front.
At the start in Auckland we sailed into the spectator fleet and hooked our mizzen on an anchored boat’s mast resulting in the loss of our mizzen mast. As others have written Jim began finding a way to set up a jury rig using two spinnaker poles lashed together. He then recut a few sails, sounds easy but down below on a heaving race boat it was not, and many hours later he produced two sails that fitted perfectly.
Unfortunately a few hours later the helmsman lost control, we broached and the jury rig came down around our ears!
As a maxi ketch we had something like 22 crew onboard to handle all the sails but without the mizzen there was not enough jobs for everyone, so lots of deep conversations were had while on watch. I enjoyed Jims company and spent many hours talking with him.
It was cold on deck deep in the southern ocean and foggy much of the time, I remember Jims frustration with the hood on his foul weather gear, I think he lost the draw sting and his answer was to wrap Duct Tape around his head, under his chin over top of his head and around his neck, it looked comical as though he had a bad case of mumps!
I had bult a kite to try and take photographs of the boat sailing in the Southern Ocean. This is still with film cameras and as for drones, nobody had even heard the word. We didn’t have a lot of wind but a few days before rounding Cape Horn it was now or never so with much trepidation, I rigged up the kite and readied the camera, I needed help to launch it and Jim was right there beside me.
The kite lifted away from the boat and Jim controlled the line while I attached the camera. The load on the 3mm Kevlar line was like a guitar string but Jim’s quick thinking he got the line through a snatch block and onto a big winch, he had the kite flying high above the boat while I activated the camera to get a few shots. It was very tense but we managed a few pictures and retrieved the kite, a first for any boat in the Whitbread!
The next day we rounded Cape Horn and the relief of safely crossing the Southern Ocean was very apparent onboard.
After that Whitbread we both lived in Hamble for a few years so our paths would often cross usually in the King and Queen pub, always fun and slightly crazy times.
Rick holds a very special place in my heart, both as a friend and mentor. We were only a couple of english first language speakers on “The Card” being that I struggle with english was a comfort to me. He is a very hard working professional photographer, always trying new innovative things to enhance his photos. He is also a highly skilled yachtsman, who can could hold his own on any competitive yacht racing team back in the day.
Rick Tomlinson made his name capturing the Southern Ocean at its most treacherous as a crew member of various yachts in the Whitbread Round the World Race. He started with freelance pictures published in Yachting World and Seahorse from Drum in 1985 and finished his 4 Race Whitbread career with a commission from National Geographic onboard Team EF.
